The Daily Mail has been running a series about the very real cultural threats that make becoming a young woman with sense and morals and manners so bloody difficult. The last article in the series today is well worth a read, because it’s about the importance of a father to a young girl just blossoming into womanhood, and that is so often left out of the debate:
The writer, Steve Biddulph, a family therapist who wrote a book several years ago about the crisis happening with boys, has noted a new crisis emerging with girls: a culture of early sexualization. In other words, slut-culture. He quite rightly notes that this is a violently destructive force that is ruining young girls’ childhoods, and he has some good advice for how to counter that force.
His number one piece of advice is to have a devoted, loving father present.
“For a girl, Dad is her personal ambassador from the Planet Male. If she has a good relationship with him, she’s unlikely to settle for less from the other males in her life, or allow herself to be manipulated. Put very simply, psychologists have discovered that it’s good mothers who make girls feel secure – but it’s good fathers who are vital for their self-esteem“.
He starts by recommending that fathers make a personal pact with themselves to never strike or hit their daughters. Good advice. It also applies to boys. No one should ever hit children, full stop. Children should be treated with gentleness by their fathers, because that sets the groundwork for them to understand that when Daddy roughhouses with them, it’s about PROTECTING them, and not about Daddy being an asshole with no capacity to discipline or enforce boundaries without the use of violence.
Don’t hit your children. Seriously. It’s an awful thing to do. If you don’t know what else to do, start here: 10 reasons not to hit your child.
Once you are established as the man who protects her, and never harms her, rough and tumble games can be really good for little girls. They lead to a greater capacity to deal with stress, for example, and an enhanced sense of adventure. I remember when PinkyPinkyPie was just a baby, learning how to crawl, and Mr. JB would crawl around after her and fling his body over hers, forcing her to struggle to get out from underneath him. It used to freak me out. Everything about it seemed wrong, but it was clear that she absolutely loved this game, so I shut my mouth (it does happen, sometimes) and just let them play.
As she got older, they would play the “I Smell A Fire” game which involved Mr. JB flinging her across his shoulders and running around the house looking for a fire, veering dangerously close to walls and corners, but never colliding, obviously. Again, all my instincts were “no! stop!”, but they both had an absolute riot playing this game.
True story: I once came home from grocery shopping on a very hot summer day to find Pinky in a snowsuit, dangling from the second story stair railing, with a rope tied around her torso. Pinky and Daddy were playing “Mountain Rescue” and Mr. JB had showed her how to tie the proper knot to pull a body and he was rescuing her from an avalanche. I will admit that I did properly freak out about that one. I don’t think it’s a good idea to teach children how to tie ropes around themselves and fling themselves off staircases. He let me have that one. They went outside to catch flies and throw them in the spider web and watch the spider come and kill them. Yech.
Aside: Mr. JB informs me it was a bowline knot, and everyone should know how to tie one. Oooooookay.
Each child, in turn, has had their own special, and to me, brutal relationship with Mr. JB. LittleDude was obsessed with pliers and vice grips when he was around 2, and he loved his Daddy to chase him around and pinch him with these tools (gently, obviously). MissBossyPants likes to play the chase me and catch me and throw me on the couch game, and I’ve come to see that when she invites a man to chase her, it means she really, truly loves and trusts that person. Our good friend JudgyAsshole can barely get in the house without MissBossy demanding to be chased, but if another, less familiar man were to do that, she would be terrified.
We are now entering an interesting phase with PinkyPinkyPie, who is just on the verge of turning 11. Physically, she appears to be a late bloomer, as was I. She looks entirely like a little girl, and she is very slender and small, weighing in at 68 pounds. Several of her classmates are fully bloomed young women, though, and like it or not, they have an impact on Pinky.
I’ve always thought that Mr. JB would play a stunningly important role at this stage of development, and we have had long conversations about how he is now a stand-in for her expectations of how other men should treat her. Turns out he always was, but right now, physical affection and affirmation is incredibly important, as is letting Pinky know, in language that is gentle and respectful, when she’s being a dick. When the kids were really little, I was the Enforcer of Rules. Our toddlers would never have thought to ask Daddy if it was okay to have a popsicle before dinner. Mommy’s word is Law.
But now, I can see that Pinky looks to her Dad to set the rules.
Can I sleep over at Amanda’s house? – Nope. Amanda’s mom is single and dresses like a hooker. Amanda can come here.
Can I go to this birthday party at a nail salon? – Yes, but no FAKE nails.
Can I go to Jack’s house for dinner? – Yes, I know his father and he’s a good kid.
Can I have an iPhone? – Yes, when you’re 17 and have a job.
And that is just how it should be. Power transfers from mom to dad. A lot of women have trouble with that. I’ve seen it happen. Hell, Mr. JB’s mom has trouble with that. She gets very jealous when the Duke and Mr. JB spend time together without her. Perhaps because my own wicked witch of a mother threw my father out of our house when I was 11, I understand on a very profound level WHY Mr. JB is so important to Pinky right now. I mean, he always has been, but now more than ever.
It’s interesting that feminism is so vested in destroying the first relationship a girl has with a man. Remember Germaine?
Related: Daddy should be every little girl’s first love
Single motherhood, divorce, rape culture, slut culture. It’s all part of teaching women that men do not matter. That they are dangerous predators who cannot be trusted. That they are worthless and useless and irrelevant, unless they submit, from childhood, to the whims of women.
Why are young girls facing a crisis? Why are they lost and lonely and depressed and despairing? Because their mothers have made sure they have no fathers. What goes on in our house has a name: it’s called patriarchy. The rule of the father. Feminists insist this means that the father rules his adult partner, and obviously, that is a Very Bad Thing ™, but it doesn’t mean that at all. It means the father is acknowledged as the person who governs children as they pass from childhood into adulthood. Patriarchy isn’t the husband ruling the wife. It’s the father ruling the children.
Without that rule, girls are lost. Boys are, too. Without fathers, everyone is lost.
Dangling like a four year old, tied up with a bowline knot, and no strong arms to catch her. And that’s truly a disaster.
